Google Inc. of Mountain View will structure its much-anticipated initial public offering of stock in a way that will give an unusually broad range of investors a chance to compete for some of its IPO shares, according to an investment banker familiar with the company's plans.

The details of the plan will come out when Google, the world's largest provider of Internet search services, files a statement to register its securities with federal regulators later this week, said the banker, who spoke to The Chronicle on condition of anonymity.

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An innovative IPO would not be surprising coming from Google's co- founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The pair, who created a freewheeling corporate culture designed to spur innovation, have resisted going public for fear of surrendering control of the company they created as Stanford grad students.

Now, their hand is being forced by an obscure government regulation that makes the time right for a public offering. And much as they revolutionized Internet searches, the two young co-founders want to democratize the Wall Street process.

Ironically, their reluctance to go public has only heightened interest in their stock offering.

The offering from Google may raise more than $2 billion and is likely to set the value of the entire company between $20 billion and $25 billion, making it the largest technology IPO since AT&T sold shares of its wireless unit in 2000. Many in Silicon Valley hope Google's debut will spur a revival in tech stocks.

IPO shares, which are priced lower than shares bought in the open stock market, usually are sold by investment banks to big money management firms and other favored clients. Those same clients often trade large blocs of stock with the investment bank's trading units, which generate hefty sales commissions for the banks.

This cozy practice came under fire after the Internet bubble burst and the shares of many newly public companies that had soared in IPO trading came crashing back to earth.

That's not to say investment banks will not participate in Google's deal. The Internet firm still will sell some IPO shares in that manner, and it has chosen the giant Wall Street investment banks Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston to lead the sale of its IPO shares.

Yet it will also attempt a novel way of allocating at least some of its IPO shares to individual investors.

"This thing will be very different than anything you've seen before," said the investment banking source, who has spoken to Google executives about their plans.

Morgan Stanley and CS First Boston will be the only banks listed on the initial document Google files with the SEC, but more banks will be involved in the offering, the banker said.

A report in the Wall Street Journal on Monday indicated that some of the IPO shares would be sold to investors directly over the Internet.

The Chronicle and other newspapers have suggested in the past that Google would allocate some of its shares to small investors through an auction model pioneered by the San Francisco investment bank W.R. Hambrecht & Co.

However, the source declined to confirm what method Google would use, and phone calls to Hambrecht, Morgan Stanley and Google were not returned.

Brin and Page, who founded Google in 1999, are believed to own about a third of the company, according to the Journal report.